Castro pushes aid for Panama Canal vets

Steven Price went to the doctor’s office after suffering headaches in 2019. He was shocked by the diagnosis: leukemia.

The San Antonio resident and veteran connected his diagnosis to his service in the Panama Canal Zone in the 1980s. Price, 64, said the military used Agent Orange and other toxic herbicides to control vegetation growth and kill mosquitos. Those herbicides now have been linked to diseases among veterans and Panamanian citizens.

Price is among the Panama Canal Zone veterans who were left out of the PACT Act, passed by Congress in 2022 to ease the process of receiving health care benefits for former service members who were exposed to herbicides.

“The U.S. government does not want another Camp Lejeune,” Price said, referring to the military base in North Carolina where veterans were exposed to contaminated drinking water in the 1970s and ’80s. The exposure led to a wave of litigation. “What they are doing, basically, is discriminating based on location and they’re discriminating based on the cost factor.”

Now, U.S. Rep. Joaquin Castro, D-San Antonio, is leading a bipartisan effort to ease the process of receiving health care benefits for Panama Canal Zone veterans who served from 1958-99.

While the PACT Act left out veterans like Price, it gave the Department of Veterans Affairs the power to identify additional groups of veterans in need of benefits.

Last month, Castro and 18 other members of Congress sent a letter to VA Secretary Denis McDonough urging him to use those powers to extend benefits to veterans who served in Panama.

The letter cited at least 400 Panama Canal Zone veterans who have developed cancer, heart disease or other conditions linked to herbicide exposure.

However, the VA does not recognize herbicide use in Panama, despite the first-hand accounts

“The testimonials from the service members who served there over the years tells a very different story, and they have communicated that to the VA,” Castro said in an interview. “Unfortunately, it’s a lot of the same skepticism that service members who encountered burn pits faced in the early years of their pleading for coverage.”

In a statement, VA press secretary Terrence Hayes said the agency continues to review all available evidence with the Department of Defense on the use of herbicides in Panama.

“If the DoD informs VA that there is sufficient evidence that Agent Orange or tactical herbicides were ever used, transported, tested or stored in Panama, that information would be added to the DoD list,” Hayes said.

Castro’s letter argues that “available records and veteran accounts” corroborate the use of herbicides in Panama.

A 2021 study written by a retired University of Illinois professor and a director at Military Veterans Advocacy organization that has examined the environmental impact of herbicide use, backs the recollection of veterans.

“Tactical herbicides were not officially offloaded and/or applied” to the landscape in Panama, but commercial herbicides were used, it said.

According to the study, the U.S. stopped spraying tactical herbicides like Agent Orange in the 1970s. However, planes previously used to spray tactical herbicides were the same planes used to spray commercial herbicides, leading to contamination and possibly higher concentrations of harmful chemicals.

Trace amounts of Agent Orange and Agent Blue could have been “added to the soils and water of the Panama Canal Zone,” the study stated.

The VA doesn’t keep a record of how many veterans served in the Panama Canal Zone, but historians have estimated several thousand U.S. military personnel and their dependents were living in the region in the late 1980s.

In 1999, the Dallas Morning News reported that the U.S. military conducted secret tests of Agent Orange in Panama during the 1960s and ’70s.

Price said the VA’s denial of the use of the herbicide leaves veterans stuck “between politics and policy” while waiting for health care benefits.

“Those veterans that are getting denied, those veterans like myself who are getting old and getting left behind, what do you think they believe the answer is — it’s suicide,” Price said.

Price is the founder of The V.O.I.C.E.S. of our Veterans, a veterans’ advocacy organization to raise awareness about veteran suicide. Without health care benefits, Price said veterans like himself feel abandoned and often fight their diseases alone.

“How long am I going to live and how long am I going to live with it when it does start to take me?” Price said. “How am I going to face my kids?”

Last March, Castro filed a bill to expand PACT Act health care benefits to Panama Canal Zone veterans, but it was referred to the Subcommittee on Disability Assistance and Memorial Affairs and has been there since last April.

“It’s been the modus operandi of the United States government to give short shrift to our veterans,” Castro said. “We ought to stand up for our veterans the way they stand up for our country when they are on active duty. Unfortunately, we have not done that.”